Joyce.  I have had this last name for almost 14 years now.  I’ve signed countless thousands of credit card receipts, spelled it over the phone for doctors, cable repairmen, and hotel receptionists, I write it on name tags.  This is the name I have given my children.

Yet.  How do we embody our names?  What makes me a Joyce?  In some ways, it is a name  I chose, I married it.  I decided  to drop my maiden name and join the family name of my husband.  But, I could have just as easily become a Smith or a McCracken, had my husband been named differently.  So for me, the question remains, how does one inhabit their name?

In the Bible, names have import.  “bitter”, “he laughs,” “princess,”  “my God is an oath,” “father of many nations.”  Your name was your birthright, your prophecy, your calling.  Even the names of God were weighty.  I AM, the God who Sees Me, Emmanuel.  The name you choose to call upon God, even today, can shape your narrative, your conversation, your theology.

There was a time last year when I was going through a very hard time.  I wasn’t just not thriving.  I was drowning.  In despair.  In anxiety.  In a sense of failure and inadequacy.  And it was during this time, when I was in the darkest hole, that a dear friend called me by my name.

And it wasn’t until that moment that I realized the legacy I had linked myself to with my last name.  My friend, she reminded me that I was a Joyce.  My name had JOY and GRACE combined permanently within it.  This was my true identity.  This was my chosen path.  For sure, at that moment, things were dark, but from that moment on, I had two guideposts.  Joy, and Grace.  These two companions have literally been my guideposts for the past year.  And hopefully for the rest of my life.

James 1: 2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.